Slovak Literature in English Translation

The Mulberry Tree is a powerful account of how an idyllic life in Czechoslovakia is shattered as the Third Reich sweeps across Europe. Iboja Wandall-Holm writes with lyrical power of the hopes and follies of youth, of intellectual and romantic awakenings cut short by a world twisting out of shape – where trust, tolerance, joy, friendship, and laughter are suddenly mere echoes in a ravaged land. One of the Holocaust’s last living witnesses, she recounts her brutal passage through the Nazi concentration camps. As a horrifying new normal takes hold – black smoke billowing up daily from the crematoria – she searches for fragments of hope in the resilience of her comrades, even in the disfigured hearts of her oppressors. Originally written in Danish, the book later appeared in the author’s own translation into Slovak, her mother tongue, from which the English edition has been translated by David Short.